Monday, March 25, 2013

My First Time of Death

Today I shifted from the surgical casualty to trauma - there's really no equivalent in the states since everyone is triaged within the ED, but here you get triaged to medical casualty (abdominal pain, chest pain, etc.), surgical casualty (fractures, sutures, etc.), or trauma (really bad, need to be intubated, probably won't survive). We had one patient that we spent all morning working on, but finally decided to call it around 1:30 this afternoon. This was the first patient that I actually called time of death on. While I've seen patients that have died before, this was the first guy that I was working on and in the room with when he actually died. It really makes you stop and wonder at what point he "died." Looking at the shell of his body, you can't help but feel that whatever made him the person he was had already left his body. It may have just been that I hadn't eaten in several hours, but it was a pretty introspective moment.

On a lighter note, Danielle, Natalie, and I went white water rafting on the Nile this past weekend and stayed at a nice island "resort" called the Hairy Lemon. The rafting was fantastic! Natalie was a bit scared at the beginning, but I think by the end she even had a good time. Some of the other students from the house happened to be staying at the Hairy Lemon for the weekend, so we were able to hang out with them. It was such a nice, relaxing weekend exploring Uganda outside the smoggy confines of Kampala.